


If You Go Into The Woods At Night

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Game Grumps, jacksepticeye
Genre: Bullying, Gen, Halloween, Homophobic Language, Minor Violence, Spring Sprite AU, in a glade 'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 02:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12571748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Nick's heard all the stories about strange things in the woods, but with two bullies chasing him, where else can he run to?





	If You Go Into The Woods At Night

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @HerbertBest's In A Glade 'verse! Thank you as always for letting me play in your sandbox!
> 
> Thank you to @TheseusInTheMaze for being my beta and for coming up with the title. Love you baby!

Nick ran through the woods, the wings of his Halloween costume dragging brokenly along the ground as the voices of the bullies echoed around him, harsh words bouncing off the trees like the light from his flashlight.They were calling him a faggot (so he liked guys, so what?) and a fairy (technically he was dressed as a wood sprite) and Nick didn’t know why he had thought that maybe this Halloween was going to be different than any other. Kids had been picking on him and stealing his candy ever since he had been old enough to go trick or treating alone. Still, for some reason he had thought that, at thirteen, maybe his peers had matured a little.

Well, they had certainly gotten stronger. The side of Nick’s face throbbed where Chris had punched him. Nick clutched his bag of candy more tightly as he ran, tears streaming down his face. Chris had punched him and Victor had taken his candy and it wasn’t like Nick had even _cared_ about the candy really except that it was _his_ and it wasn’t _fair._ The punch had knocked Nick to the ground and he had felt the wings he had worked so hard on bend and twist out of shape and it was like something in Nick’s heart had twisted too. He had lashed out blindly with feet and fists and landed a lucky blow to Victor’s crotch, then snatched up his bag of candy and ran straight out of the suburbs, into the woods. He had been hoping that maybe, with all the stories about what kind of things lived in the woods that the boys might not follow him, but no such luck.

Nick’s breath burned in his chest and he could feel his legs beginning to cramp but he kept running. Maybe he could lose them, circle back around and make it home in relatively one piece. Sure, they’d come after him at school on Monday, but Nick knew every inch of the school, knew where to run to and where to hide. The woods were an unknown place except for the stories. So many stories.

Nick darted around a tree and slammed right into something solid that made a surprised sound when he hit it. Nick staggered back, trying desperately not to fall and crush his wings any more than they already were. He panted, legs shaking, as the person who he had run into took a step out of the shadows and into the beam of his flashlight.

_Beautiful_. It was the only word Nick could think of for the man standing in front of him, with his tan skin and brown hair that shone nearly red in the light of his flashlight. Not handsome, though he was wearing a blue and black plaid flannel and jeans and looked like something out of an ad in a wilderness magazine, but something beautiful and familiar in a way that Nick’s panicked brain couldn’t pinpoint at the moment. Nick cast a frightened glance over his shoulder, sure that Victor and Chris were going to burst through the trees behind him at any moment, but he realized with relief that he couldn’t hear the heavy thud of their boots or their taunts anymore.

“Hey, you okay?”

Nick looked up into the man’s warm brown eyes, which were full of both kindness and concern, and tried to remember how words worked.

The man took a step closer, then reached out and lightly touched Nick’s cheek, where Chris had hit him. Nick winced reflexively, but was surprised when the pain and throbbing faded into the background of his awareness, not nearly as bad as it had felt only moments ago.

“Is someone after you? The person who hurt you?”

Nick had been told never to talk to strangers, but he felt the words spilling out of him in a rush, about Victor and Chris and the fight, all the little casual cruelties that they inflicted on him at school that the adults in his life turned a blind eye to. When Nick was done, the man turned his sad and thoughtful gaze towards the darkness of the woods.

“Did you get all that?” Nick thought he heard the man say, but if he was talking to someone, Nick couldn’t see them or hear a reply. All he heard was leaves rustling, the hoot of an owl, the far off cry of a coyote. A few moths that had been swooping in the beam of his flashlight suddenly flew off into the night, to do whatever it was that moths do.

“Okay then,” the man said with a little nod, then he looked at Nick and gave him a smile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even introduce myself. You can call me Dan. I like your costume.”

“I’m Nick,” Nick replied. “And thanks. It ummm, looked better earlier in the night.” Nick shrugged out of the straps that held his wings on. The wire frame was twisted out of shape, and when Nick tried to twist it back, a few broken peacock feathers drifted to the ground, and several more feathers threatened to come loose. Crap, he had worked really hard on those. The blue tunic he had sewn himself had a few tears in it and was smudged with dirt, and he was sure the pants had fared no better. The only part of his costume that was still intact were the little antlers he had sculpted out of clay and painted himself, still attached to their headband. “There’s this guy in town, he does all these paintings of the woods and like, spirits that live in the forest. I was trying to look like a wood sprite, but now the wings are ruined.”

“Oh you can totally be a wood sprite without wings!” Dan said brightly. “That’s the thing about sprites, they can look like whatever they want! But if you want something to replace the wings, how about…” Dan reached up into his own hair, and Nick blinked. How could he not have noticed there were flowers in Dan’s hair? They were marigolds, bright yellow and dusty orange and deep red like a sunset. Dan gathered several of the flowers in his hand before reaching for a bittersweet vine hanging off of a tree nearby, murmuring something under his breath as he did so. Within minutes he had fashioned a little crown of flowers, which he placed on Nick’s head, over the antlers. “There you go! Perfect!”

Nick felt himself starting to blush, only to whirl around in fear when he thought he heard a sound from behind him. His flashlight only revealed more forest, to his relief.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about those boys finding you,” Dan said. “It’s so easy to get lost in these woods, if you don’t have someone to guide you.”

*******

Victor crashed through the woods, one hand clenched into tight fist around his bag of candy, the other holding the flashlight in a death grip. He could hear Chris behind him reciting a litany of curses as yet another branch whacked him in the face. It felt like they had been chasing that faggot Nick for hours, following the bobbing light of his flashlight, but they didn’t seem to be catching up to Nick at all. Victor was angry and frustrated, his balls still aching from the kick Nick had given him.

“Vic! Wait up!” Chris whined from behind him.

“No way! We’re going to lose him if you don’t move your ass!” Victor hissed, but even as he said that, the light through the trees finally came to a stop. Nick must have _finally_ tired himself out. Victor grinned and looked back at Chris, whose skull face paint matched his own. “There he is! Follow me and turn off your flashlight,” Victor whispered. “We can sneak up on him.”

Chris was quick to obey, which was what Victor liked most about him. He didn’t ask questions, and he hit whoever Victor wanted hit. Though when they caught Nick, Victor would be the one doing the hitting this time. Victor clicked off his own flashlight and hefted it a little, considering how much damage he could do with it.

Victor and Chris crept closer to the light. It was funny, it had looked like the beam of a flashlight a minute ago, but now it flickered and moved like candlelight and when he finally stepped through the trees into a little clearing, Nick wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Instead there was something sitting on a large rock, something that looked like a jack o’ lantern except it wasn’t carved out of a pumpkin. The vegetable was a pale white, irregularly shaped, and the face that was crudely hacked into it seemed to be leering at him sinisterly.

“What the hell?” Victor said.

Chris nudged Victor with his shoulder and wordlessly pointed across the clearing. There was another strange jack o’ lantern with a twisted grin, and Victor could have sworn it wasn’t there a second ago. Victor swallowed hard, trying his best not to show Chris he was creeped out. There were stories about strange things that happened in the woods, but those were just stories, right? No one actually believed in the Changing Man, who didn’t have one true shape and could turn into your worst nightmare, or the Wandering Wraith who had bottomless voids where his eyes should be and could steal your soul if you looked at him. And even though all the boys told tales of the Devil’s Bride, who was so beautiful even with her iron teeth and iron hooves that she could stop your heart and you would smile as you died, well, no one actually believed any of that stuff. This had to be a trick. Nick had probably set this whole thing up, he was always doing some weird art shit.

“Nick? I know you’re here, Nick, you can’t scare us!” Victor called.

Another jack o’ lantern appeared out of the darkness, flickering candlelight shining out of its eyes and mouth. Victor clicked on his flashlight and for a second there was a bright light and then a loud pop as the bulb blew out. Victor cursed and dropped the flashlight, rubbing the afterimages from his eyes. In that instant of light he hadn’t seen anyone, but at least now he knew why the jack o’ lanterns looked so weird.

“Turnips, Nick? Are you stupid or something?” Victor called out.

“ _It’s traditional_.”

The voice that came out of the darkness wasn’t Nick’s, and something about the harmonics of it made Victor’s skin want to crawl right off of his body. Chris crowded close to him, and Victor could feel him trembling as Chris raised his own flashlight and clicked the switch. Nothing happened, and Chris swore and shook the flashlight, banging it against his palm.

“I’m—I’m not scared of you, whoever you are!” Victor shouted.

“ **Oh, I think you are** ,” said a different voice. It sounded chilly and hard, as if cold stone could speak. “ **You’re just little boys who paint themselves up like death, who pick on people for fun. Well, _we_ like to have fun too.** ”

Something darted at the boys from out of the darkness, something with a sharp pale face covered in black eyes like those of a spider. There were two mismatched regular eyes in the middle of that face, if you could call eyes that glowed blue and green ‘regular.’

Chris screamed and backed away, hands covering his mouth, his flashlight and bag of candy forgotten. Victor turned on his friend.

“You fucking chickenshit! It’s just—- a high school kid in a costume or something!”

The spider eyed person (it had to be a person, a regular person, had to be, had to be) chuckled. “ _Oh, is that what I am?_ ”

As Victor watched, the person’s mouth filled with even more sharp teeth, the face elongating to house a set of massive jaws. It was like something out of a movie except it was real and happening right in front of him. The thing snapped at him and Victor backed up quickly, too scared to scream. His back hit something solid and cold.

Victor didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to look, but he was already turning, already staring up into a face that was hard and gray as ash, staring into eyes that were bottomless, that made him feel like he was falling, like he was a tiny thing in a vast universe. He felt his flashlight and his bag of candy fall from his suddenly nerveless fingers. He was aware that next to him Chris was crying, but the sound seemed far away.

The thing in front of him grinned. “ **Are you scared now**?”

Victor and Chris turned to run, not caring that it was dark and they would barely be able to see their hands in front of their faces, just needing to get _away_. And that’s when something cold grabbed their ankles and stopped them both in their tracks.

Victor looked down and there was a pale white hand holding him fast. As he watched, the hand let go and _she_ rose out of the ground, floating upward as if she was an angel. Her skin was glittery and nearly translucent, her hair as inky black as a night without stars, her hooves a shiny gray. Her dress was white and seemed to glow, just like her eyes, which were the color of moonstone.

The Devil’s Bride smiled, and her teeth were gray iron, sharp as knives. “Hello, boys,” she said, and her voice was dark water running over rocks, her breath carrying the scent of iron with it. “Don’t you smell….. delicious.”

This time when Victor and Chris ran, nothing stopped them. Indeed, they found the path back out easily, as if the forest itself wanted to be rid of them. Both boys ran home and crawled into bed, shivering under the covers as if they were sick. They wouldn’t go back to school for almost a week, and when they did go back, they were different, quieter. The kids they had picked on suddenly had one less thing to be afraid of.

********

Suzy watched the children run from her with a smirk on her face. She had no love for bullies, and she was glad to see them go. Now there were more important things to tend to.

Jack grinned, all of his eyes looking at her as Brian dumped out the two sacks of candy on the ground for sorting. “That was fun!”

“Wasn’t it though?” Suzy unfurled her wings, which were pale green tonight, like a luna moth. “They deserved a good scare.” She sat cross legged by the pile of candy, sifting though it until she found a marshmallow pumpkin, which she chewed on with delight. The taste and texture were entirely unlike the rocks she normally ate. It was nice to have something different once in awhile.

Jack found a packet of candy corn, which he grabbed in his jaws, shaking it back and forth like he was trying to kill it.

Brian just smiled and sorted the candy into piles, making sure to save some of the crunchy peanut butter chocolate things that Holly liked, in case she came by.

“Heya.” Dan walked into the clearing, his expression thoughtful. He sat next to Brian and laid his head on his shoulder briefly before reaching into the pile of candy and pulling out a packet of all natural organic gummy worms.

“Hey.” Brian reached out and ran a hand through Dan’s hair. “The other kid get out okay?”

“Yeah, I walked him to the edge of the woods. Sweet kid.” Dan chewed on his gummy worm pensively. “I just don’t get humans sometimes. Why they hurt each other like that.”

Brian shrugged and took a chocolate covered caramel from the pile. Humanity was a mystery, one that wasn’t going to get solved any time soon.

*******

Nick shut his bedroom door behind him, letting out an exhausted sigh. His parents hadn’t noticed his black eye, or at least, they hadn’t said anything about it. Tomorrow he would cover it with makeup and it wouldn’t even be noticeable.

Nick felt that he should have been worried about the next day at school. Victor and Chris would be after him again, no doubt, but that seemed far away and unimportant at the moment. He put the bent wings on his desk, his head already filling with new ideas, a new designs for next years costume. He placed the crown of flowers on his bookshelf, smiling as he did so. He had no idea that the flower crown, unwilting, would be with him through high school and art school before sitting in a place of honor next to his Academy award for costume design. Those were future things, unknowable until one is living through them.

Nick crawled into bed, and his dreams, like his future, were as sweet as processed sugar.


End file.
